CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jude

John’s story had been part of my life for as long as I could remember. My mother loved to talk about his parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah, and how she had visited Elizabeth when they were both with child. Mother had been present for John’s birth, then had returned to my father in Nazareth.

Five years later I was born. By then Yeshua was four, James two, and Damaris one. I learned to walk among cedar shavings and sawdust. I fell asleep to the sound of pounding nails and whining wood. When he was not working, Abba taught us Torah, while Ima made our home as pleasant as she could. She had a fondness for bright colors, and once when I asked why she wore bright oranges and blues when no one else did, she replied that Egypt had influenced her tastes and she never wanted to forget the time she lived there. James and Damaris had been born in Egypt, she reminded me, but then she and Abba had come home to Nazareth, where they would remain unless Adonai willed otherwise.

As I grew with my brothers and sisters, I heard stories about John, who grew up in the hill country of Judah. Ima said he was being raised as a Nazarite, never drinking any intoxicating beverage and maintaining ritual purity because he had been filled with the Ruach ha-Kodesh since his birth. “Many of Bnei-Yisrael will turn to Adonai because of John,” Ima always said. “And he will go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, turning the hearts of fathers to the children and the disobedient ones to the wisdom of the righteous, preparing the people for Adonai.”

“He will go before who?” I once asked, but Ima only smiled in response. “You will see,” she said, smoothing my hair. “You will see.”

John remained more of a locust-eating legend than cousin until a few months before the wedding in Cana. Yeshua wanted to visit John in the desert because we’d heard he was calling people to be baptized for the repentance of sins. I knew John’s message was timely—everyone knew that many of the priests and leaders of Israel had black hearts and unclean hands. Since returning from the exile in Babylon, our people had lived through generations of infighting among prideful men who wrestled for power, first in the Temple and then on the throne. Those struggles had not ceased with the arrival of the Romans. Israel no longer had a king—Ima said we would not have another until the promised king arrived—but our religious leaders seemed to care more about currying favor with Roman leaders than with HaShem.

Our religion had become a series of laws that grew ever more complicated. Like everyone else, I read the Scriptures—the teachings, the prophets, and the writings—and determined never to do what our forefathers had done and forget the Law. They forgot and fell into sin; so we read and learned and memorized and put laws around the Law so we would never offend in one jot or tittle. But somehow, like many others, I sensed that in all our efforts to learn and work and obey, we had forgotten something elemental. Something important.

Yet John was drawing crowds in the wilderness. Had he found what we were missing?

Yeshua invited all of my brothers to visit our kinsman, yet James and Joses were busy with an order, and Simeon had no interest in traveling. To satisfy my curiosity, I decided to join Yeshua.

As we traveled southward, following the Jordan, at one point he looked at me and said, “A voice cries out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of Adonai, Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.’ Do you remember the prophecy?”

I struggled to place the words. “Isaiah?”

He nodded. “This highway”—he indicated the paved road we walked on—“is nothing compared to the work of John.”

We hadn’t gone far when he quizzed me again. “‘Behold, I am sending My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet, before the coming of the great and terrible day of Adonai. He will turn the hearts of fathers to the children, and the hearts of children to their fathers . . .’” He glanced over at me. “Remember?”

I blew out a breath. “Zechariah?”

“Malachi. And I tell you, Jude—these are things you will see with your own eyes, this very day.”

I did not know what to make of my brother’s comments, but Yeshua had always been given to odd pronouncements. He was also prone to wander off when there was work to be done. Often James or Joses or I would find him staring at the horizon as if his thoughts were focused on some realm we could not see.

But on the day we found John, Yeshua remained firmly in the moment. Step by step we moved down the road that led us to a place outside the village of Salim. A crowd had gathered on the rocks that lined the bank of the River Jordan. Among the crowd I saw representatives from every level of society: soldiers clad in leather armor with daggers hanging from their belts; mothers with young children; wealthy merchants and tax collectors attired in richly adorned robes that screamed of wealth and privilege.

One couple caught my eye because I could not readily identify their station in life. They wore simple linen clothing without ornamentation, but the man and his wife wore their hair curled in the Roman fashion. They did not appear wealthy—they wore no gold bracelets, earrings, or chains—but carried themselves with dignity and were exceptionally well groomed.

Yeshua must have noticed my interest in the couple. “Chuza,” he said, nodding in the man’s direction. “And his wife, Joanna.”

“Are they from Nazareth?”

Yeshua shook his head. “Tiberias. They are servants at Herod’s palace.”

I lifted a brow, about to ask how he had gathered this information, but at that moment a man with waist-long hair stood and walked to the river’s edge. He wore a rough garment of animal skins, inexpertly stitched and ragged at the lower edge. His laced sandals revealed muddy legs, his beard was long and untrimmed, and his eyes blazed with inner fire.

“Why have you come here?” he asked, lifting his voice until it floated above the crowd. “Did you come to hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness? For that is who I am, the one who shouts, Make straight the way of Adonai, as the prophet Isaiah foretold.”

I glanced at Yeshua, impressed that he had quoted the same Scripture.

“Repent of your sins,” John shouted, his bony finger picking out various people in the crowd. “For the kingdom of God is at hand. Come and be immersed in these waters, leaving your sinful ways and rising to walk in repentance. Confess your sins so that the Ruach ha-Kodesh, the Spirit of Adonai, can purge you with hyssop and make you clean. He will wash you, and you will be whiter than snow.”

A flurry of movement caught my eye. I turned in time to see a group of dark-robed Pharisees join the crowd at the riverbank. Their faces were tight with disapproval, their mouths frozen in unyielding frowns.

John must have seen them, too. But instead of ignoring or pandering to them, he pointed at the eldest and most disapproving of the lot and said, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit worthy of repentance, and do not think you can say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our father! For I tell you that from these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. Already the axe is laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire!”

Was he threatening our religious leaders with eternal destruction? I listened with rising amazement as the Pharisees bristled.

“But, John,” a common man called, “how can we produce this fruit?”

John met the man’s question with a smile. “Whoever has two coats, let him give to the one who has none; and whoever has food, let him do the same.”

Another man stood, his ostentatious clothing declaring him to be a tax collector or merchant. No one else would advertise his wealth in such an obvious display. “What shall we do?” he asked.

John made his way through the crowd and rested his hand on the man’s shoulder. “When you take the taxes, do not take more than you are supposed to. Do not think to enrich yourself with the money of others.”

“What about us?”

I searched for the speaker and saw that the voice belonged to a soldier—one of the Jews who served in the Roman militia. John walked toward him, a man most Jews would purposefully avoid. “Do not take things from anyone by force,” answered John, “do not falsely accuse anyone, and be content with your wages.”

As John paused to drink from a water jug, murmurs rose from the crowd. “Is he the messiah?”

“Are you the Christ we have been waiting for?”

John lowered the jug, then turned and waded into the river until the water reached his waist. He turned again and fluttered his fingers over the surface. “Who will come to be baptized for the remission of sins? As for me, I immerse you in water for repentance. But the One coming after me is mightier than I am; I am not worthy to carry His sandals. He will immerse you in the Ruach ha-Kodesh and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He shall clear His threshing floor and gather His wheat into the barn; but the chaff He shall burn up with inextinguishable fire.” John lifted his hands again. “Now, who will come to be baptized?”

I looked over the crowd. The tax collector stood, followed by another man, and another. Women stood with their husbands, and children followed the example of their parents. The soldier stepped forward, as did a wealthy merchant.

But the leading Pharisee did not stir, nor did any of his companions.

“So this is our cousin,” I murmured. But when I looked at Yeshua, his gaze was fixed on John.

I stood and brushed the dirt from my tunic. “I’m going to take a walk,” I told Yeshua. “Going back out to the road. Perhaps I can find someone from Nazareth, even pick up some business for the family.”

Yeshua nodded, and I left him to think his thoughts as I went on my way.

I’m not sure what people thought as Tasmin and I waited for information outside the gates of Tiberias. Perhaps they considered us beggars, since we were both covered in grit from the road. We tried to approach Jewish families, but most of the travelers who passed through the gates wore tunics and togas in the Roman style, while we looked undeniably like Jews, and poor Jews at that.

Most of the men I tried to stop stared at me as if I were a stray dog that had suddenly bared its teeth. I sank onto a rock, discouraged, and Tasmin clicked her tongue in sympathy. “Let me try,” she said, lifting her chin. She used her head covering to wipe the mingled sweat and dust from her face, then arranged her features in a pleasant smile and walked to the road. Another group was approaching, a handsome litter carried by four servants and guarded by two horsemen.

“Shalom!” she called to the man riding in front. “Will you wait a moment, please?”

The horseman reined in his mount and scowled. “What business have you here, woman?”

“I am in search of news,” she said, her smile disappearing, “of one called John the Immerser. I hear he has been arrested.”

Behind the horseman, a bejeweled hand parted the curtain on the litter. Instinctively I gripped my wooden staff, not knowing what sort of person lay behind the disguising fabric.

A man peered out—Roman, from the look of his aquiline nose—and beckoned Tasmin to come closer. “Who asks about John?”

“I do.” Tasmin stepped forward but remained out of the man’s reach. “And my companion, who is John’s kinsman.”

I stood as a pair of dark eyes met mine, then shifted to Tasmin. “You have heard correctly,” the man said. “The prophet has been arrested and imprisoned in Herod’s palace. He is safe but will probably not remain so much longer.”

“Why is that?”

The man lifted his shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “If Herodias has her way, she will convince Antipas to take John to Machaerus, a prison by the Dead Sea. She cannot abide the sight of the man.”

Tasmin nodded and backed away, murmuring her thanks.

After the litter moved on and entered the city, Tasmin turned to me. “I don’t understand why Antipas’s wife hates the Immerser.”

“I can guess,” I said, taking a cup from the pack saddle. “I would imagine it has something to do with John’s insistence on pointing out her sin. Not only did her marriage make Antipas an adulterer, it also made her guilty of incest. John was not at all reluctant to name her sin in public.”

Tasmin lowered her head, then looked up at me, her face serious. “I have not paid much attention to politics or affairs of government.”

“You should pay attention,” I told her. “Because you live in a world that changes from year to year and day to day. But HaShem’s laws do not change, and John has never been shy about exposing sin. Yeshua would say Adonai sent him to be a voice in the wilderness, not a diplomat in the palace.”

“But why would he insult Herodias? I have heard she is a beautiful woman—”

I cut her off with a snort. “Does beauty make a woman good? Antipas’s wife may be beautiful, but apparently she is also ambitious. Though married to Philip, after meeting Antipas, she saw an opportunity and seduced him. Philip divorced her, Herod married her, and thus she climbed to a position of greater power.”

“I had no idea,” Tasmin said. “I have never known any woman like that.” She glanced at the glowing horizon. “Oh! Darkness will soon be upon us and we are nowhere near Capernaum.”

“We will have to stay here.” When I caught the look of unease that rippled over her face, I hastened to assure her, “I am no more pleased than you, but I will find an inn where you can safely spend the night. I will sleep in the town square.”

“Will you be safe there?”

I touched the knob at the top of my staff. “I will.”

“But the expense! I did not plan on staying at an inn—”

“Do not be concerned. HaShem has made provision for us.”

She stammered in protest, but when I pulled the donkey toward the city gates, she followed.